Kiwi Comic Tells Tale of Dwarf Fortress Failure

Tim Denee published a four-page comic inspired by the indie game Dwarf Fortress Sunday.

In Oilfurnace, Denee tracks the growth, boom and ultimate demise of a zombie-ridden mine, full of treasure, opportunity and death. The story was originally commissioned by Australian gaming magazine PC Power Play.

Denee, a graphic designer from Wellington, New Zealand, told Wired.com in an e-mail interview that the Dwarf Fortress session the comic is based on took two or three months to unfold.

“I think Dwarf Fortress generates such complexity and depth of information, that the task of the storyteller is to simply sift through and find the narrative,” he said.

Dwarf Fortress is an indie-grown sim that melds the procedural nature and pared-down ASCII visuals of the rogue-like with the grand world building of PC sims.

Denee previously told another tale of Dwarf Fortress failure. His Bronzemurder comic, shared in April, tells the story of a dwarven water pump plagued by a deadly monster.